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OF THE 

ALLEGED ILL-TREATMENT OF CAPTAIN 
FENTON’S WIFE AND DAUGHTER. 


At a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, held in Boston, on Thursday, January 11, 
1894, Dr. Samuel A. Green spoke as follows : — 

In Professor Gold win Smith’s recently published work en¬ 
titled “ The United States, An Outline of Political History 
1492-1871,” the writer, on the authority of the Baroness de 
Riedesel, makes a statement concerning an affair said to have 
happened in Boston during the Revolutionary period, which 
the circumstances of the case do not warrant. While it is 
always hard to prove a negative in any disputed question, the 
details of this occurrence are so monstrous and improbable 
that they bear on the face full evidence of their falsity. In 
speaking of the chivalrous treatment which Burgoyne and 
his army received from General Gates after their surrender, 
the writer goes on to say: — 

When they got to Boston there was a change. Madame de Riedesel, 
the wife of the German General, complains that she was cruelly in¬ 
sulted by the Boston women. In her memoir we are told that the 
wife and young daughter of Captain Fenton, a royalist absentee, were 
stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and paraded through the city.. 
(Page 99.) 




El27g- 

■FsGr 

2 

Tlie inference is here left that Mrs. Fenton and her daugh¬ 
ter were tlius outraged after Madame de Riedesel’s arrival in 
Boston, though this is not stated in so many words. If the 
affair ever happened at all, judging from the memoir, it prob¬ 
ably occurred before her arrival there in the autumn of 1777, 
but in the quotations, given below, the date of the assault 
is left very obscure. The extracts taken from the latest trans¬ 
lation of her “Letters and Journals relating'to the War of 
the American Revolution ” (Albany, 1867), and the fullest in 
English, are as follows: — 

In the house in which I lived at Bristol, there was a Captain Fenton 
whose wife had remained in Boston with a daughter of fourteen. He 
loved them both dearly, and begged me to take charge of letters when 
I should embark for America. Upon my arrival there, I learned that 
as her husband had not returned they had been imprisoned, and after¬ 
wards greatly ill used. I will narrate this, however, in its proper 
place. (Pages 48, 49.) 

During my sojourn at Bristol, in England, I had made the acquaint¬ 
ance of a Captain Fenton, from Boston, to whom the Americans, upon 
the breaking out of the war, had sent a summons, but which, true to 
his king, he would not obey. Upon this, the women of the exasperated 
rabble seized his wife — a woman deserving of all esteem — and his 
very beautiful daughter of fifteen years, and without regard to their 
goodness, beauty or modesty, stripped them naked, besmeared them 
with tar, rolled them in feathers, and, in this condition, led them 
through the city as a show. What might not be expected from such 
people, inspired with the most bitter hatred! (Pages 140, 141.) 

These references are undoubtedly to John Fenton, who 
had been a captain in the British army, but afterward settled 
at Plymouth, New Hampshire, where he was commissioned 
colonel in the militia. He was a noted tory, and at the 
beginning of the Revolution was a member of the House of 
Representatives in that State, from which body he was ex¬ 
pelled on account of his political proclivities. At a later 
period he was arrested by order of the Provincial Congress, 
and ])laced on his parole ; and on September 19,1775, General 
Washington was instructed by the Continental Congress to 
discharge him from custody, “on his giving his parole of 
honour to proceed to Neiv-York, and from thence to Great- 


Britain or Ireland^ and not to take up arms against the good 
people of this Continent.” 

One of the sisters of the well-known Sir John Temple, the 
grandfather of the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, married in New 
England, long before the Revolution, a Captain Fenton, for¬ 
merly of the British army, and subsequently a Loyalist refugee, 
whose daughters received small pensions. There can hardly 
be a doubt that she was the person referred to by the Baroness 
<ie Riedesel; but among her collateral kindred in Boston there 
is no tradition that she was ever maltreated by a mob, and no 
reference to such an occurrence has been found among the 
numerous family letters of that period still extant. 

While the town of Boston was held by the English, and the 
streets were bristling with soldiers, it seems impossible that 
such an outrage against decency could have been committed 
by an}^ mob. If it occurred at all, then, it must have been 
after the Evacuation of the town, — which took place on 
March 17, 1776, — and probably before the beginning of the 
year 1778. A careful and critical examination of all the Bos¬ 
ton newspapers, however, printed between April 1, 177e5, and 
January 1, 1778, has failed to reveal the slightest allusion 
to such an event, which surely in some way would have been 
noticed in their columns, if it had ever happened. The papers, 
thus examined, are : — 

“The Massachusetts Gazette: and the Boston Weekly 
News-Letter,” of which the latest number in this Library, 
was published on February 22, 1776; “The Boston-Gazette, 
and Country Journal”; “The Continental Journal, and 
Weekly Advertiser,” of which the first number appeared on 
May 30, 1776; and “The New-England Chronicle: or, the 
Essex Gazette” (Cambridge) from May 12, 1775, to April 4, 
1776, “The New-England Chronicle” (the same newspaper, 
then published in Boston) from April 25 to September 12, 
“ The Independent Chronicle ” (still the same) from Septem¬ 
ber 19 to October 31, 1776, and after that date called “The 
Independent Chronicle. And the Universal Advertiser.” 

Owing to the exigencies of the Revolutionary War, “ The 
Essex Gazette,” originally published at Salem, was removed 
to Cambridge, and shortly afterward to Boston; and owing to 
various causes, not now understood, the title of the newspaper 
was often changed. 


4 



Without doubt the patriots felt a very bitter animosity 
against the tories of that period, but in all their actions, of 
which many, .perhaps, would have been accounted lawless at 
other times, they respected decency. They were men of 
families, and, true to their English instincts, always de¬ 
fended the dignity of womanhood; and they never would 
have allowed an exasperated rabble thus grossly to insult 
defenceless women. 

Lord Mahon, in his “ History of England from the Peace of 
Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles. 1713-1783 ” (fifth edition, 
London, VI. 194), mentions the same shocking story; and he, 
too, gives Madame de Riedesel as his authority for the state¬ 
ment, but he leaves it to be inferred that the occurrence took 
place after her arrival in Boston. 

More than ten years ago, at a meeting of the Historical 
Society on March 9, 1882, Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge referred to 
the same subject, and said that his attention had been called 
to it by Mr. Edward J. Lowell, who was then in Germany. 
As no corroborative testimony has ever been found elsewhere, 
Mr. Lodge did not hesitate to pronounce the whole story a 
falsehood. 

This German baroness was a guileless woman, unused to 
the ways of the world, — as crops out in her “ Letters and 
Journals,” etc.,—and too readily believed improbable tales. 
She had never seen the seam}" side of life, and her credulity was 
equalled only by her inexperience. Without doubt the story * 
was told to her, and she jotted it down ; but her authority in 
the matter is entitled to no more weight than specks of dust 
floating in the air. 









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